"I recognize your face, but cannot recall your name."

"Well, my name is Collins. Once, when I escaped from the South, you congratulated me at Cairo. Now, I congratulate you, and I can do it with all my heart, in exactly the same words. I am very sorry for your misfortunes; but if the Rebels must have one of us, I am very glad that it was not I!"

After our troops captured Memphis, I encountered the young lady who aided Mr. Collins in escaping. She was enthusiastically loyal, but her feeling had been repressed for nearly two years, when the arrival of our forces loosened her tongue. She began to utter her long-stifled Union views, and it is my deliberate opinion that she has not stopped yet. She is now the wife of an officer in the United States service.

The Fas­cin­ations of Cairo.

Cairo, May 29.

A drizzly, muddy, melancholy day. Never otherwise than forlorn, Cairo is pre-eminently lugubrious during a mild rain. In dry weather, even when glowing like a furnace, you may find amusement in the contemplation of the high-water mark upon trees and houses, the stilted-plank sidewalks, the half-submerged swamps, and other diluvian features of this nondescript, saucer-like, terraqueous town. You may speculate upon the exact amount of fever and ague generated to the acre, or inquire whether the whisky saloons, which spring up like mushrooms, are indigenous or exotic.

In downright wet weather you may calculate how soon the streets will be navigable, and the effect upon the amphibious natives. It is difficult to realize that anybody was ever born here, or looks upon Cairo as home. Washington Irving records that the old Dutch housewives of New York scrubbed their floors until many "grew to have webbed fingers, like unto a duck." I suspect the Cairo babies must have fins.

Long-suffering, much-abused Cairo! What wounds hast thou not received from the Parthian arrows of tourists! "The season here," wrote poor John Phenix, bitterest of all, "is usually opened with great éclat by small-pox, continued spiritedly by cholera, and closed up brilliantly with yellow fever. Sweet spot!"

Theorists long predicted that the great metropolis of the Mississippi valley—the granary of the world—must ultimately rise here. Many proved their faith by pecuniary investments, which are likely to be permanent.